


Of spoken lies and unsaid truths

by villainsmatter



Category: The Nevernight Chronicles - Jay Kristoff
Genre: Anger, Character Study, Gen, Grief, Loss, a lot of negative emotions, everyone in this trilogy sucks at parenting, i honestly like this version more, if you've already read 'specters', jonnen's character is slightly different here, post-Darkdawn, so idk what this is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-15
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:34:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26485750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/villainsmatter/pseuds/villainsmatter
Summary: "Mercurio was good at lying, he truly was, and he never told the boy that his eyes, his hair, the features of his face too much resembled the ones of a young girl with a broken nose and a shadow dark enough for two, and that looking at him for too long made his heart ache. But, you see, the boy had been fed lies since he was born, he had breathed them and worn them and heard them whispered in the gravebone halls of the place he had once called home, and the ones speaking them had been infinitely better at the game of pretending than Mercurio could ever hope to be.So he knew anyway."
Kudos: 1





	Of spoken lies and unsaid truths

**Author's Note:**

> So. uhm. What is this you may ask. Answer is: I truly do not know. I started writing it yesterday at... idk 11 pm and here i am, 2000 words later. Honestly I have... too many bones to pick to properly describe my thoughts on Darkdawn but Jonnen's character arc so inconsistent it gave me an headache so here it is my explanation for... whatever the hell happened at the end of that book. Oh, I also love Scaeva so I'm undoubtedly biased here, but here we are. As always, thank you just for reading <3 I hope you like it!

**T** he Silent Mountain was even more silent, at night.

 _That_ , the boy had discovered laying awake in his bed, tossing and turning and invoking a sleep that would just not come to him. There had been a choir, once, Mercurio had told him, but it had stopped singing when his sister killed Drusilla, the Shaiids and all the acolytes of the Church. Now the only sounds he was able to hear -eyes wide open and his hands clenched into little fists- were the steady beats of his heart.

He wondered, during those endless ~~never~~ nights, who had occupied that room, before him. What were their names, how they looked and sounded like. Where they were, now.

He hoped they had fled when they had the chance.

He knew, deep inside of him, that they hadn’t.

And the taste of death which permeated every chamber, every corridor, every stone of the place he now oughted to call home, grew thicker and thicker in his throat, so strong at times that he thought he would throw up. But the boy knew how to pretend it didn’t, that he did not see or hear or taste or _feel_ all the blood the Silent Mountain was soaked into, and he pretended so well that no one noticed.

Maybe they didn’t care enough, or maybe he was an excellent liar.

Indulging in a kind of self-flattery, he liked thinking that the reason was the latter.

After all, he thought, walking around those place in search of something he never quite seemed to find, it was almost a given: all his family did - _had done_ \- was to deceive, in one way or another.

Perhaps that was the only common trait they shared.

And lying turned out to be an unexpected resource, throughout those months.

Mercurio wasn’t one for small talks -nor he was one for longer ones, so one might have said he didn’t like talking at all-, and after the last truedark he had spent most of his time avoiding the little boy he had taken with him, more than asking him questions or trying to comfort him. The boy knew he was hurting too, though the old man would never admit that, and he treasured that knowledge like a double-edged blade, careful enough not to cut his own skin, shed his own blood, but ready to make the other bleed instead. Above all, he was grateful for the old man’s grief, for the simple reason that it had kept Mercurio away from him -him, who so much resembled his lost pupil- during the first weeks they had spent together.

And despite the fact the boy had craved some kind of human contact back then, following Sidonius and Bladesinger and _even Marielle_ like a sort of silent lost puppy in desperate search of sweet treats, he was glad no one had been there to ask him questions about what had happened at the Ribs. Mercurio would have done just that, hadn’t he been so deep into the memories of his not-quite-daughter. And that would have not been good for the boy, because he would have told the old man the truth.

Now, he knew better.

Someone -someone with dark hair and dark eyes and a deep voice he desperately wished to hear again- had once told him that it was not wise to show the throat to an opponent, unless you were ready to bite twice as hard as them. _But what if they don’t bite_ , he had asked, lips pursed and furrowed brow, desperately wanting to understand and to please. _If they smell weakness, they will_ , was the answer he got.

And in the Silent Mountain, a place that he oughted to call home and still did not resemble it at all, feeling afraid of a bite felt as natural as breathing and the boy thought it was rather obvious, actually. Almost silly, with hindsight.

But hindsight was rarely useful and never pleasant.

The boy knew, rationally speaking, that he had no reason to be afraid, that no one would hurt him there, that no one would hurt him at all. That he was safe.

But that didn’t stop him from locking his door up every single ~~never~~ night, scared that Marielle would suddenly remember he and the man who took her brother’s life shared the same blood, and that she would decide to shed his, to make it even.

So, to fight that fear, he accepted to learn from her.

Week after week, he would sit by her side -looking at her blonde curls and flawless skin and perfect smile which, despite her best efforts, still didn’t seem to fit quite as well as she hoped- and drink the knowledge she would instill into his mind, just as he did with his tutors, in a time long lost. He would look at her, nod and do as she told him -ever the obedient student he was- and pretend not to notice the way her face would light up, seeing the boy every day closer to the picture of her late brother ~~lover~~. The boy hoped that picture would prove itself to be enough to blind her. Not to make her see in the features of his face the man who had taken Adonai away from her.

He didn’t want to become a blood speaker, least of all a blood speaker at the service of the goddess who had destroyed his family, but knowledge was power and his duty was to hold onto even the crumbs of it, if he didn’t want to drown. The Gods were as selfish and cruel as humans were, someone told him so when he was still a kid. He hadn’t fully believed them back then, too many people around them said the contrary, but now he saw that far too well for his taste.

Hindsight, once again.

But if the deities played with humans as a puppeteer would do with their little dolls, it was only fair for humans to return the favor, to gain what they wanted or needed.

And what the boy needed, at the moment, was safety.

~~He tried not to think about what he wanted.~~

With Mercurio, things were a little different.

There were no splinters of fear ready to pierce his heart, when the two of them spent time together. He knew the now Lord of Blades would not cause him harm -he had no reason to and all the reasons not to- and that he had sworn to take care of him, in the memory of a past that mirrored the present too much and too little at the same time. That still didn’t mean that it was easy not to look away, every time the old man’s gaze met his own.

Mercurio was good at lying, he truly was, and he never told the boy that his eyes, his hair, the features of his face too much resembled the ones of a young girl with a broken nose and a shadow dark enough for two, and that looking at him for too long made his heart ache. But, you see, the boy had been fed lies since he was born, he had breathed them and worn them and heard them whispered in the gravebone halls of the place he had once called home, and the ones speaking them had been infinitely better at the game of pretending than Mercurio could ever hope to be.

So he knew anyway.

In defense of the old man, it was difficult not to think of her in the Silent Mountain. Countless times, the boy thought he'd heard her voice in the halls. He had never heard her laugh -and he couldn’t quite remember seeing her smile- so he wasn’t sure if the sounds that seemed to echo through the corridors and the chambers were accurate, precise reflections of what once had been, or just fragments of his imagination, but he couldn’t say he cared. It was better than nothing.

The boy missed her terribly, even though the time they had shared together was less than the time they had now been apart, and so wished he could see her just once more -or twice, or thrice, just enough so that he wouldn’t feel so alone anymore-, but a little part of him, the part that knew better, also recognized that maybe her being gone wasn’t a bad thing.

It was easier not to hate the dead.

Of course, that he couldn’t tell anyone and most surely he could not tell Mercurio, not if he wanted to form a long-lasting bond with him. He didn’t plan to stay in the Silent Mountain forever, to become just another sick appendix of the Goddess, to serve her and adore her and bleed for her until the end of his days, but the Silent Mountain was all he had for now, the only shelter from a world that would hardly welcome him with open arms after the last truedark. And Mercurio was the Lord of Blades, which meant he had more power over that place than anyone else: staying close to him seemed the only reasonable option.

Sacrifices were necessary, but the boy had been sacrificed enough times to know it did not matter.

He did not flinch when Mercurio finally asked him to help him fill the gaps, to tell him what happened while he wasn’t there, to give his contribute in telling the story of his sister. What the old man wanted to hear was clear and truth had little to do with it: reality was hardly black and white, but storytellers needed an audience, and the audience needed someone to root for, and the boy knew far too well who Mercurio had elected for that role.

So he lied, once more.

His name wasn’t Lucius. ~~ _“That is not the name my mother gave me.”_ , he watched Mercurio write on the page, and bit his tongue so hard he thought it might bleed.~~

Liviana wasn’t his mother. ~~_“Or at least, the woman who called herself his mother.”_ , the boy ignored those words with an heavy heart and immense shame.~~

His father was a monster. ~~_“Because looking from his mother’s broken body to the thing his father had become, he knew what it was to hate the one who’d made you”_ , the old man read out loud, and the shadows around them grew so dark the boy worried someone might notice.~~

No one did.

He resented him, of course, as he resented his mother ~~s~~ , his sister and everyone else around him, all who had played that seemingly endless chess match whose only loser seemed to be him. But the word ‘hate’ didn’t fit, it never would, and it was actually easier to remember his parents in secret, now that everyone expected him to let them go without a second thought.

It was funny, that Mia had been allowed to get her revenge and he couldn’t even have memories, or show grief.

Had his sister been alive, it would have probably been even worse.

It was not fair of them to expect him to pick sides -least of all it was fair of them to expect him to pick _their_ side-, but no one had ever told him that life was fair and just, quite the opposite, so he couldn’t say he was surprised.

The boy did not lie about the final outcome, of course -that would have been impossible-, even if he idly wondered -in his bed, still wide awake and restless- what a wonderful world it would be, one where written words could change the events and re-arrange reality to one’s liking. Some things had gone as he said they had, some hadn’t, but indulging on the differences between reality and fiction was of no use. He knew, Mercurio didn’t and that was all that mattered for now.

If the past was gone and certain, the future was another matter entirely.

When he was a little kid, his path had seemed craved in gravebone, so sure not even the Everseeing could have had a say in it, had He wanted to. Now those thoughts sure seemed childish and still, looking around him -at the people he oughted to call family, but weren’t and never would-, he knew they had a plan for him, exactly as someone else once had. It was too ironic not to find it funny, in a sick way.

So the boy could only work on the little he had between his hands and hope that those new expectations would be disappointed, in the same way the old ones had.

He didn’t know what he would be, become, if his story was really going to be worth a book like his sister’s was, but he sure did know one thing: he was sick of people telling him what his next years would bring as if they were already written on paper with ink and blood. One day, he would be free.

 _One day_.

For now, he had to force himself to wait.

And still, listening to the silence around him, to the darkness that embraced him whenever he went to bed and failed to fall asleep, still he looked back at what he had lost with regret.

Despite the lies, his grief grew only stronger.


End file.
